Previous NVIDIA graphics cards in single card configurations were limited to lower levels of anti-aliasing. With the GeForce 8800 series, users can experience 16x anti-aliasing with only a single card. DailyTech has verified the option is available in the NVIDIA control panel.

The physical card itself is quite large and approximately an inch and a half longer than an AMD ATI Radeon X1950 XTX based card. It requires two PCI Express power connectors and occupies two expansion slots. An interesting tidbit of the GeForce 8800GTX are the two SLI bridge connectors towards the edge of the card. This is a first for a GeForce product as SLI compatible graphics cards typically have one SLI bridge connector.

Having two SLI bridge connectors onboard may possibly allow users to equip systems with three G80 GeForce 8800 series graphics cards. With two SLI bridge connectors, three cards can be connected without any troubles. NVIDIA is expected to announce its nForce 680i SLI and 650i SLI chipsets with the GeForce 8800 series. NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI and 650i SLI based motherboards are expected to have three PCI Express x16 slots.

Moving onto the performance DailyTech has selected Half Life 2: Lost Coast, Quake 4, Prey and 3DMark06 for benchmarking. These games and applications were selected as other games use the same game engine. In addition to performance tests, DailyTech was also able to measure power consumption.

The test system configuration is as follows:

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700

NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI based motherboard

2x1GB PC2-6400

NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1950 XTX

Western Digital Raptor 150

Futuremark 3DMark06

Radeon X1950 XTX

GeForce 8800GTX

Score

7026

11200

Kicking off the benchmarking festivities is 3DMark06. NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTX scores 59% higher than ATI’s current flagship. This isn’t too surprising as the GeForce 8800GTX has plenty of power.

Half Life 2 4xAA/16xAF 1600x1200

Radeon X1950 XTX

GeForce 8800GTX

FPS

60.74

116.93

Quake 4 4xAA 1600x1200

Radeon X1950 XTX

GeForce 8800GTX

FPS

34.23

65.93

Prey 4xAA/16xAF 1600x1200

Radeon X1950 XTX

GeForce 8800GTX

FPS

55.53

88.87

Half Life 2: Lost Coast loves the GeForce 8800GTX. Here the GeForce 8800GTX is able to show significant performance gains over AMD’s ATI Radeon X1950 XTX—approximately 92%.

Quake 4 shows similar gains as Half Life 2: Lost Coast too, an approximate 92% improvement.

Prey is based on the same game engine as Quake 4. However, Prey shows smaller performance differences between the GeForce 8800GTX and ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, albeit its still 60%.

Power Consumption

Watts

Radeon X1950 XTX

GeForce 8800GTX

Idle

184

229

Load

308

321

Power consumption was measured using a Kill-A-Watt power meter that measures a power supply’s power draw directly from the wall outlet. The power supply used in the test system is a Thermaltake Toughpower that carries an efficiency rating up to 85%.

DailyTechpreviously reported NVIDIA recommends a 450-watt power supply for a single GeForce 8800GTX graphics card. This isn’t too farfetched of a recommendation. Power consumption of NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTX isn’t as bad as expected. When compared to AMD’s current flagship ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, the GeForce 8800GTX only consumes 24% more power at idle. The power consumption differences under load decreases to around 4%. Considering the performance differences, the GeForce 8800GTX is no worse than AMD’s ATI Radeon X1950 XTX in terms of performance-per-watt.

Expect NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS graphics cards to be available next week. As NVIDIA has had plenty of time to ramp up production and ship out cards, this will be a hard launch with immediate availability.

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